Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Sony PMW-F3 vs Panasonic AG-AF100Philip Bloom has received his production Panasonic AG-AF100, and has also had on loan for a week a pre-production PMW-F3. He clearly likes the PMW-F3 "This feels like a really meaty professional camera and if feels reassuringly expensive," but as he tweeted, there are other considerations:

image is definitely cleaner with F3, but AF has the 1080p 60fps overcrank and is SO much cheaper.
-Philip Bloom, Twitter

Camera Sales in Japan
The 43rumors site has a chart showing the sales for DSLR cameras in Japan. The Canon EOS Kiss X4 (that's the T2i here in the states) has 13.6% of unit sales, while the 5D Mark II has just 1.6%. Does this mean anything? Probably not, though it does tell you why the 5D isn't updated as frequently as the Rebel cameras!43rumors: Japanaese 2010 system camera sales analysis

Nikon D7000 video reviewCamcorderinfo have posted a review of the Nikon D7000, focusing on it's video capabilities, and they're pleased that Nikon has finally taken a serious stab at video, but:

Even with all these updates, however, Nikon is still a step or two behind Canon and Sony as the best manufacturers of video-capable DSLR cameras. The D7000 suffered from a sloppy interface, confusing controls, and a lackluster performance in our motion test. While we do love the option for 24p and 30p recording, we wish there was an option for 60p as well.

Split Screens in Final Cut ProChris Fenwick provides a video demo of how to do split screens in Final Cut Pro. He shows a simple and a more complex way of doing it.OneOnOne: Tutorial - FCP Split Screen Low Down

Templates for Apple Motion
If you have Apple Motion, you might want to check out the templates that MotionVFX offers. They're having a 40% off sale, and even if you don't end up buying anything, you might get some graphic ideas for your own projects!MotionVFX: Happy New Year 40 percent OFF SALEDecember 28, 2010

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

The figures are in for the year, and Toy Story 3 was not only top at the box office, it is also the highest-grossing animated film of all time (on an adjusted basis).

It's also one of the best-reviewed movies of the year. It receives an almost perfect 99 out of 100 on Rotten Tomatoes. Disney ( DIS - news - people ) is also pushing the film for a Best Picture Oscar instead of just hoping for a Best Animated Feature win. The studio recently unveiled a clever line of "for your consideration" ads comparing Toy Story 3 to past Best Picture winners.

But it's not all good news; while the total box office remains high for the year, total attendance has fallen (the difference made up by increased revenue from 3D movies.)

A full 8% of this year's box-office revenue, or about $850 million, came from the additional $3 to $4 a ticket that moviegoers paid to see films such as "Toy Story 3" and "Clash of the Titans" with images that appear to pop out of the screen, according to research by Lazard Capital.
[...]
"Focusing purely on headcount is nice if you don't want to accept money," said Jeff Blake, vice chairman of Sony Pictures. "But if money goes up while bodies go down, I'm not sure it's necessarily a bad thing."

The Consumer Electronics Show runs January 6 through 9th, and there should be something interesting announced by someone at the show. Last year Sony announced the HXR-NX5u and the HDR-AX2000 along with several consumer video cameras. It's also the time that Canon announced their updated consumer video cameras, as well as the EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II lens. Neither company usually announces much pro-video gear at the show; though the HXR-NX5u is in Sony's professional range, and the EF 70-200mm is a pro-lens....which means you never can tell!

The Canon Rumors site has a 5D Mark III rumor and they also separately report that Canon will announce some kind of camera - other than the point-and-shoots and consumer video cameras - at CES, though he's not sure what. He doesn't think it's the 5D Mark III, and I suspect he's right; unless Canon is feeling pressure from the Panasonic AG-AF100, it would be unusual - and early - for them to announce the 5D Mark III at CES.

The 5D Mark III spec list at Canon Rumors is doubtful too; RAW Video support? That seems unlikely. Maybe they'll improve the codec, or maybe even add 4:2:2 support, but RAW capture poses several problems for Canon and users including; is Compact Flash the right medium for recording uncompressed video? If you want to add some sort of "RAW" support, putting the full video out the HDMI port would seem the logical way to go.

Monday, December 27, 2010

I saw the Coen Brothers version of True Grit yesterday, and enjoyed it a lot. As I suspected, it was very similar to the John Wayne movie; the same characters, the same plot, and many of the same dialog lines. There were some differences in the story, but the plot was essentially the same.

This movie seemed visually a lot richer and more detailed than the original - the locations looked more authentic and less like movie sets. Jeff Bridges was much harder to understand at points than John Wayne was, while Matt Damon's performance as LaBoeuf gave Bridges less chance to steal the entire movie. If you liked the original movie, or like westerns in general, you'll enjoy this movie.

I do have one complaint though; I found the color grading of the movie somewhat annoying; a lot of it was very washed out. The Coen's seem to like to manipulate their movies - O Brother, Where Art Thou? was the first movie digitally graded and had a very yellow look, while their movie A Serious Man was graded to look like an old 60's movie. I liked those, but found the effect in True Grit more disconcerting. I can't explain why.

I was also a little surprised that - less than four days after release - the print we saw was damaged in at least one place. I suspect the problem was in the production of the print itself, as there was some noticeable color flickering and a dark flash at one point in the movie.

Friday, December 24, 2010

How to make a rockwool acoustic panel
A short how-to-video on Vimeo on making acoustic panels with rockwool and costing about 1/4 the cost of professional panels. I just wish the music in the background wasn't so in the foreground.Vimeo: How to make a rockwool acoustic panel

How to build a dolly"Well, I know I'm not the first to do this, but I won't be the last. What follows is my Dad and I building a skateboard dolly. It came out great. For around $100 here is what we came up with... "mike.miller.producer:Skateboard Dolly Build

A Panasonic AG-AF101/AG-AF100 test shot

We had the opportunity to make a test shoot with Panasonics new AG-AF101 in order to see what this baby can do. We shot on a cold and snowy hamburg day in an old, dark factory with a small crew. We had about six hours of shooting and a hell of a time!

If you're a camcorder or DSLR user shooting video you likely already know of and understand the advantages of a small HDMI monitor. The LCD50 will be found attractive because of its small size and low weight, its modest price – just over $500 at B&H – and range of attractive features.

The video definitely wouldn’t have been as stable if I didn’t have that Nano. The Running Man handheld rig is quick to build, stable when using and easy to pack away. It fills a need that is surprisingly hard to create in hand held rigs.

True Grit
The Coen Brothers version of True Grit opens today. I'm a fan of the original movie, which starred John Wayne, but am also looking forward to the new version. The brothers claim that they have never seen the movie, and that theirs is based on the original book. It will be interesting to see how the new movie compares; the trailer for the movie has scenes so similar to the original, it almost looks like a remake.
You can read an interview with the brothers;Deadline New York: OSCAR: Joel And Ethan Coen Q&A On 'True Grit'

Comparing the Sony PMW-F3 to the Canon 5D Mark IIFxguide has some video that compares these two cameras, and demonstrates that the F3 has less rolling shutter, and doesn't have the artifacts you can get from the 5D because of it's line-skipping algorithm (the 5D has to go from the high-resolution sensor image down to a 1920 x 1080 image very quickly, so it uses a fairly crude algorithm to do it. This can cause moire patterns in fine details.)

Some commentors think that the cameras shouldn't be compared because they aren't in the same price range, but that's wrong; independent and some big-studio filmmakers are using the 5D Mark II (just see Canon's recent television add) and the F3 is going after that market.FXGuide: F3 vs. 5D Mark II

Jag35 Electronic Follow Focus
An electronic follow focus for ~$500? Available in the spring of 2011? We shall see....Jag35: Electronic Follow Focus

Building the Mac Edit Room
The Digital Filmmakers Podcast has an interview with Ned Soltz that discusses specific hardware and software options to build a system for Final Cut Pro, Avid Media Composer and Adobe CS5. From capture cards to monitors to storage systems, they cover the good, the bad and the ugly. NewMediaWebinars: Digital Filmmakers Podcast Episode #33

Does 120 million hits on YouTube = money?
The band OK Go has received a lot of exposure on the net with their unique and imaginative music videos, but does that success actually translate into a successful recording career? And does that even matter? Lead singer Damian Kulash recently wrote a column in the Wall Street Journal about his band's philosophy:

For most people, the obvious question is: Has this helped sell records?
The quick answer is yes. We've sold more than 600,000 records over the
last decade. But the more relevant answer is that doesn't really matter.
A half a million records is nothing to shake a stick at, but it's the
online statistics that set the tone of our business and, ultimately, the
size of our income.

Not everyone is buying it. Darren Robbins at The Zeitgeisty Report thinks Kulash is "one of the more delusional self-appointed champions of indie rock," and points out that OK Go parted ways with their label (EMI) partly because they weren't making enough sales.

In truth, as “The Blue Man Group Of Rock & Roll”, OK Go’s genius lies in their realization that being in a band these days has little to do with music. Devise one visually stunning video or event after another, keep your name in the press, and you can continue to find corporations willing to pay you for appropriating whatever hipster cache they believe you might have.

It’s “The Great Rock & Roll Swindle” all over again, albeit this time minus the music.

He also thinks that OK Go owes much of it's success to EMI's
early support, though I think they owe it to the success of their
treadmill video; and I don't know how involved EMI was in that...

Everything's bigger in Kansas
Did you know that the largest IMAX digital screen in the country is in Wichita Kansas? Me neither, but it just opened last Friday. Be careful to heed this warning:

There is a potential for getting sick during an IMAX movie. "It happens on some of our screens when the picture is in your whole field of view," said Dan Gray, vice president for operations. But it depends on the person and the movie, and maybe only a couple of scenes from a particular movie.

Roku allows you to instantly stream tons of entertainment on your TV. Watch over 100,000 movies and TV shows from Netflix, Amazon Video On Demand, Hulu Plus and more. Listen to music on Pandora, or listen to your own iTunes playlists. Watch major sports, news, or original Internet programming.

Stillmotion Photo + Cinema was hired by Canon Canada to make an advertisement about a new service they are offering where they will turn a photo into an oil painting (using real oils and real artists!) Interesting.

But what I found particularly interesting is the making-of-video. I actually like it better than the commercial!

...we wanted to bring the viewer into the scene where they are hammering on the deck but to do that we had to get very low to the ground where the action was. one of the things i like most about the cinevate atlas30 is the ability to shoot underslung. we actually removed the legs and just rested the end blocks on apple boxes so that we can quickly go between standard and underslung mode throughout both shoot days.

There's a blog post explaining how the project was planned and shot, working with a slider, etc. There's some nice shots in there...

It's been reported that the Final Cut Pro download site will close on January 6th...that's the same day that the Mac Apple Store opens, so I don't think you can take that as an indication that Apple is abandoning Final Cut!

Monday, December 20, 2010

Noise Industries has released a free update to FxFactory, 2.5.3. This update adds two new effects; an Analog TV filter which adds scan lines, distortion and the curve of an analog tube TV to footage, while the Channel Switch transition emulates a channel switch on an analog TV.

PHYX Stylist is a new set of filter effects that includes Skin Light (for adjusting skin tones) as well as Fog Generator, Cathode Ray (emulates night vision, old or damaged televisions and electronic rifle scopes), Haze Removal and Sparkle Star (photographic star filter)

Creative COW DSLR Video Podcast
Richard Harrington and Robbie Carman have started a podcast on DSLR Video. You can download it from iTunes.CreativeCow: Creative COW DSLR Video Podcast

DSLRs for Digital Cinema
DP, effects cinematographer and VFX supervisor Dave Stump talks about how he thinks HDSLRs fit into the film cinemtographers toolkit. He's neither totally for or against them, seeing both the advantages and disadvantages:

It obeys a really old axiom, that when the only tool you own is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. If you know only one kind of camera, then every job you do looks like a job for that camera. But ultimately, what we learned from CAS is that every camera has its strengths and weaknesses. If you let the job tell you which camera to use, rather than just your knowledge of only one camera, then you are ultimately doing the greatest service to your producer.

It's a lovely plastic lens that transforms your beloved hunk of metal and glass into a digital toy camera. Yesiree you can now get that lovable Lo-fi "technology" on your digi cam from Lomography's series of Diana plastic cameras.

Saturday, December 18, 2010

Singular Software has launched the DualEyes for OS X public beta program. Winner of TV Technology's 2010 Mario Award for its breakthrough technology, DualEyes is a standalone application for the automatic synchronization of video and audio clips in dual-system audio production. Designed to work alongside any video editing application, DualEyes is streamlined to accomplish the task of replacing in-camera scratch audio with separately recorded high-quality audio.

Friday, December 17, 2010

Here's a follow on from the question earlier in the week dealing with Flip footage that was in a Final Cut Express sequence set to DV-NTSC 32 kHz Anamorphic (I suggested he change the sequence to Apple Intermediate Codec 720p 30)...

I didn't know I could change existing sequence settings - huge revelation! Thank you. So I changed the settings to Apple Intermediate Codec 720p 30. Then my sequence, which had the video filling the frame, changed to look like this:

So you can imagine I'm like, "Whu?" Maybe a different setting? Or...?

A test export looks great, and is 1280 x 720! But I can't afford to start from scratch at this point. Recommendations?-CW

I'm not sure if there's a quick way to change it (i.e. change everything with a click of a button.) I feel like someone once told me about doing that, but I can't remember how; though it might have been in Final Cut Pro!

The slightly easy way to do it is this in the sequence;

double-click the clip to select it

Click the Motion tab in the Viewer window

Under Basic Motion item (click gray arrow to expand), look at Scale. Ideally, it should be at 100. If it's not, click the red x button that's under "Nav" across from the Basic Motion title, the settings for that should now be reset to 100

Under the Distort item, Aspect Ratio should be 0. If it is not, click the red x button across from Distort to clear it.

Reset button

The clip should now fill the screen in the Canvas, though note that if you are also using clips that aren't 1280 x 720, those won't fill the screen, and you'll have to Scale them up to do so.

Go to next clip in the timeline and rinse/repeat

This should let you scale all your clips up to the correct size without having to re-cut or re-add transitions.

Aaron Williams, DI colorist, filmmaker, drummer and self-described "all around nerd" [as if drummer wasn't bad enough] says that "in order to be useful for once on Twitter" he plans to post daily tips on colorizing of the things he's learned over the years. Some examples:

1: Order of Operations 1. Match shots within scenes 2. Create your look 3. Use windows to fix specific problems & distractions. Stick with that order and you'll never leave a time limited session with an unfinished product/unhappy client

2: *always* watch the footage all the way through before coloring. then your looks will fit & change w/the mood of the film. You'll also be able to grade faster since you know what's coming up & will already know the problem shots/scenes

Thursday, December 16, 2010

I've been playing with color correction in Final Cut Pro using the Three-Way Color Corrector for some time now, and though I'm getting better at tweaking things the way I want them to be, I still have a long way to go to get really good at it. And never mind Apple Color...

Which makes the idea of a preset bunch of color correcting filters somewhat appealing. Phyxware has released the color filter set PHYXware Color, which runs within Noise IndustriesFxFactory (FxFactory is both a collection of video filters, as well as a filter engine that other developers can develop and sell their own filters for.)

PHYXware Color consists of five filters: BleachBypass, Glow Dark, Selective Saturation, Shift Suppress and Techni2strip. The first two provide a wide range of general image manipulation, while Selective Saturation and Shift Suppression adjust a specific color range within the image. The Techni2strip film simulates the Technicolor 2-strip process first introduced as the Technicolor System 1 Additive Color Projection in 1917, Technicolor was used for films such as ‘Gone With the Wind’, ‘Ben-Hur’, ‘The Phantom of the Opera’ and‘The Wizard of Oz’.

Selective Suppression and Shift Suppression, used in small amounts, can manipulate the color balance of the image. I think the trick here - like all color correction - is too work in small amounts.

In truth, the filters I was really drawn to are BleachBypass and Glow Dark. These ones sort of encourage you to go a bit crazy with the different settings. I particularly like the somewhat painterly texture that the Glow Dark filter can add to your image. Techni2strip will probably be most useful for special effects/projects.

Settings for BleachBypass

Manipulation of the filters is reasonably easy, since you're mostly working with sliders to adjust parameters. There's only two to five parameters to adjust, though even those can offer a lot of variables. I particularly like their online help; each filter has it's own help page which shows both what the filter does in general terms, and explains each of the parameters.

Help for BleachBypass

The parameters for each of the filters is listed below.

BleachBypass:

Saturation

Gamma

Bleach High - Controls the 'high clip' of the Bleach process. Lower this value to crush highlights.

2010 was an exciting and interesting year. The year where HDSLR's went from strange oddities to acceptance in television and film work. We saw many firsts, including the first TV episode shot on an HDSLR, the first consumer 3D video cameras, and the first iPads. Not all the action was in the budget and consumer end of things, with the arrival of products like the ARRI Alexa, Zeiss CP.2 lenses, and AutoDesk Smoke.

But it wasn't all clear sailing for manufactures, with RED having problems trying to keep ahead of increasing competition, while several manufactures - Redrock and Tiffen to name two - announced products and then seemed unable to ship them.

The consumer electronics industry wanted this to be the year of 3D, but it truly was the year of HDSLR video. And now with Panasonic and Sony poised to release new large sensor video cameras, we may be in for even more changes.

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

A recent question arrived about how to burn video captured on a Flip to a DVD. You'd think it would be pretty straight forward, but...

Earlier this year I got a Flip. I tend to use it for family videos. I'll take bits of footage and edit it together in Final Cut Express, and then export little 400 x 225 movies via the QuickTime Conversion / MPEG-4 export option (H.264). Then I email those mp4 files to grandparents, etc. The files are nice and small, look good, and everyone (Mac and PC users) can see them - works out great!

So my problem: It's the time of year where I make DVDs to give to family members. In the past, it's been 640 x 480 video and I've used iMovie and there have been no problems. This year I'll be exporting 1280 x 720 sequences, via Final Cut Express. I'm wondering if you can recommend a formula for exporting from Final Cut Express so the video will look good on DVD? I've been trying Quicktime Conversion / MPEG-4 / H.264 and, even with the data rate jacked up pretty high, the footage looks crunchy compared to the source files.-CW

When I make DVDs from HD material, this is what I do:

If editing in Final Cut Express, I go to File>Export>QuickTIme Movie... to export the edited movie. This saves it in the same format as the Sequence you've created; it doesn't recompress it to the MPEG2 format that will appear on the DVD; I leave the MPEG2 compression to iDVD.

The output movie probably has the same/similar settings as the Flip Movies. You can open it in QuickTime player just to check that it's what you think it is i.e. 1280 x 960.

If using iDVD, go to Preferences, and choose Encoding: Professional Quality. Go to File>New Project and then in the New Project dialog, choose Widescreen (16:9), since your video is HD. Add your video(s) and then burn a DVD. iDVD will/should create a video that is in 16:9 format and should look pretty good.

Make sure you test the DVD on a Television; its not going to look as good on your computer as the HD source files do, but it should look pretty good on a TV.

The follow-up revealed that I'd assumed something; it turned out the movie was being edited using the wrong settings...

I do have more questions, if that's okay.

1) I exported a sequence via File> Export.> QuickTime Movie. The default application to open the file is Final Cut Express- when I do that it displays the video in 16:9. But when I open it in QuickTime Player the image is squished. Does this mean anything, or will it look okay on the DVD end? (I'll be using Adobe Encore by the way, if that matters.)

2) Going to "Get Info," I see that the exported video is 720 x 480. Guess that explains the squish. So, my settings in Final Cut Express are probably to blame? I've been using DV-NTSC 32 kHz Anamorphic, via Easy Setup. Should I be using a different setting, given the Flip footage is 1280 x 720 size?

3) And, if so, how does one easily move edited sequences from one setting to another?-CW

Personally, I wouldn't use the DV-NTSC 32 kHz Anamorphic format with the Flip video, even though your final video is going to an NTSC DVD. I'd probably try the Apple Intermediate Codec 720p 30 setting. That's if you're sure your video is 720p (1270 x 720).

Then, export to a QuickTime movie and it should not be stretched when played in the QuickTime Player. (The opening by default of the QuickTime file in Final Cut Express rather than the player, while annoying, is expected behavior.)

Re; whether DV-NTSC Anamorphic would look okay on the DVD; the answer is "maybe"....while it's true you do want the video to end up compressed anamorphically on the DVD as that will give you the best image quality for widescreen material, the DVD uses MPEG2 not DV, so it still have to be recompressed to MPEG2. I'm assuming Encore will handle that for you, but you should give it the best source material you can. Note that DV is a different compressor to MPEG2 that in some situations does not produce as high a quality as MPEG2 (which is why I wouldn't use it as an intermediate compression format.)

Now, I don't use Encore, so I don't know what it wants or can handle. It may be that you have to export to something like DV-NTSC Anamorphic to give it a file that it will accept, though I doubt it. iDVD will accept any QuickTime file, so I just give it the HD file on the theory that it will produce the best result from that. Admittedly, there may be better MPEG2 compressors out there, but I've been happy with the results I'm getting.

I would recommend doing a quick test disc with a short video segment; create a New Sequence, or change the existing one (by going to Sequence>Settings... and choosing the Load Sequence Preset... button) to Apple Intermediate Codec 720p 30 in Final Cut Express. Export the file as a QuickTime movie, then put it and the DV-NTSC Anamorphic file into Encore as separate movies on the same disc, burn the disc and then play it on a TV and see what you get. If there's no visible difference, then stick with the settings you are currently using!

In the early rounds it looked like Adobe Premiere CS5 had scored a knock-out blow with it's ability to easily edit H.264 files without need for transcoding. Though you can edit H.264 files from DSLRs in Final Cut without transcoding to ProRes first, it can get tedious as the program constantly wants to Render the content before playing.

I admit to being biased; as a long time Premiere user who switched to Final Cut when Adobe stopped Mac support a few years back, I've been loath to jump back, but I kept hearing these good things about Premiere CS5.

Another important detail; I'd heard some time ago people saying that you shouldn't edit natively in Final Cut because of issues with decompression/recompression, and I had wondered whether Premiere had any of the same problems. But when I didn't hear anyone mention it, I assumed not...

So at the risk of being too easily lead by my own prejudices, I am intrigued by this article from Paul Joy where he tries exporting a video from Final Cut and Premiere, and then compares the results. Paul started with the thesis mentioned by many Premiere supporters that "recompression always makes it worse; therefore Premiere must do a better job," but what he found was that the results he got were better from Final Cut.

Hosted by VFX artist and guru Ben Brownlee, attendees will be guided through the more than 160 visual effects plug-ins of FxFactory Pro, from motion tracking, to creating 3D splines, stunning lighting effects, unique 3D filters and transitions, and more.

Tune-in live on Tuesday, December 14th at 10:00 AM PST to NewMediaWebinars.com to catch the free FxFactory plug-ins webinar. The webinar will be placed on-demand shortly thereafter, free to all viewers. NOTE: two attendees will win a full copy of the Noise Industries FxFactory Pro application.

The Tiffen Smoothee, the Steadicam for iPhone's and Flip cameras, is still not available, though a recent email from Tiffen says that "The first Steadicam Smoothee unit will be available for the Apple 3Gs iPHONE camera very shortly. Really!"

The Smoothee will cost $199.95, which includes the Smoothee, Camera Mount Device, Carry Bag and Quick Start Guide. In January they will have the Smoothee for the iPhone4, new iTouch and Flip Mino. The mount is interchangeable, and according to Tiffen will be available separately for $24.95 (so you could use your iPhone and your Flip with the same Smoothee.)

Friday, December 10, 2010

Last night was the latest Boston DSLR Meetup at E.P. Levine in Waltham. A capacity crowd turned up and filled the studio to hear Rich Harrington, a video editor, producer and co-author of multiple books, including From Still to Motion [Amazon $31.49].

I've seen Rich speak before, and he certainly believes in packing in the information. I suspect he drinks three or four cups of coffee before he begins, and once he starts, he doesn't stop - and only takes questions in 30 second breaks along the way.

Pizza and socializing before the meeting starts

He's a man of strong opinions too, quite happy to tell people when they are wrong. Noting the variety of people in the audience - from still photographers to videographers, producers and editors - and the need to cover many different topics, he suggested that if you found yourself bored during the talk, just wait two minutes.

Rich Harrington getting ready while Dan Bérubé stands in for the screen

There was a lot of equipment and theory covered, but I was intrigued with his focus on the importance of pre-production planning. He said that too often the focus is on the production phase, when in fact better pre-production planning will save time, money, and produce better shots. He recommends going out and shooting stills of locations, planning your lighting, and he even recommended some iPhone apps for working out where the sun will be when you shoot!

He also is a strong supporter of editing natively, and said that if you're not using either Media Composer 5, Premiere Pro 5, or Vegas Pro, then please leave your wallet on the table for him, as you clearly don't care about money...interestingly, he does still use Apple Color for final color correction.

The meeting concluded with some showings of movies made by attendees. Unfortunately, I had another appointment and couldn't stay for all of that.

Definitely a great meeting, and it will be interesting to see what's in store for the coming year!

Large Sensor CamerasHigh Definition magazine features an article about the new large sensor cameras from Panasonic and Sony (you can read it in a flashy online viewer.)HighDefinition: Digital Issue 45

Createasphere WebcastsCreateasphere has a series of webcasts coming up featuring creative teams from the TV series GLEE, Dexter and Boardwalk Empire discussing the challenges they face.Createasphere: The Best of TV Webcasts

Canon 7D used to shoot Community stop-motion episode
NBC used a 7D for an upcoming Christmas episode of “Community”. Broadcast tonight, Thursday, Dec. 9th, 2010, they’ve gone old school and done a Rudolph-esque claymation epsiode. You can see a behind-the-scenes video at PetaPixel.PetaPixel: Canon 7D Used to Shoot Stop-Motion Episode of NBC’s “Community”

Due to its small, unintimidating footprint and excellent photography in low light, DSLR cameras are finding their way on movie sets everywhere. In this free seminar, Shane Hurlbut, ASC and Jacob Rosenberg discuss how their movie Act of Valor was shot using Canon EOS 5D Mark II DSLR cameras and how Adobe Premiere Pro was used on set to natively edit the DSLR files in real time. They will explain the workflow they used to edit the film and how Adobe helped knock down roadblocks in post-production.
Produced by Videography and sponsored by Adobe.Registration: How DSLR Cameras and Adobe Premiere Pro Help Movies Get made

Pitching your film project effectively is one of the most important elements in helping with outreach, collaboration and fundraising. Join us for this exciting pitch panel with selected experts, who will help deconstruct your pitch and teach you how to be successful in pitching your film projects. If you would like to pitch your film or work in progress, please submit a short description of the project and a link to a video sample to jen[at]filmmakerscollab.org by Friday January 14th.

Network & socialize with fellow DSLR filmmakers for our Holiday gathering of the Boston DSLR Meetup and Boston Final Cut Pro User Group! Plan to have a great time to screen your shorts and meet some great DSLR shooters, filmmakers and digital storytellers and talk about movie making!

COLLABORATE & START A PROJECT
And, for December, we will begin our mission goal to get members involved to collaborate together in crews to start a project - Stay Tuned for updated details!

DSLR Workflows – From Pre-Production to PostRichard Harrington, Rhed Pixel
Join Richard Harrington, a Director and Editor as he shares practical workflows for DSLR projects. Learn essential planning techniques including planning for storage, synchronization, and gear selection. Rich will also demystify post production with a particular emphasis on native editing. Learn how to transcode less and edit faster (no matter which NLE you choose).

A few weeks ago I attended the Public Television Quality Group's Boston Workshop. This two day event covered everything from shooting and editing to delivering the program to PBS. But you didn't have to be a PBS producer to get something out of this experience.

Emmy award winning SMPTE Fellow Mark Schubin started off the event with a presentation entitled: Things You Can and Can't Fix in Post. Beginning with the statement:
You can fix anything in post only if you have enough time and money, Mark covered a wide range of topics from lenses to lighting.

He demoed using a polarizing filter to cut reflections, he pointed out that it’s not always a good idea to do filtering during production since most optical filtering can be closely emulated by digital filtering - and he stressed the fact that it's the camera operator that's the most important function in the equation.

Here's some of the themes of the talk:

Acquisition starts the chain and affects everything that follows. If you want to get the greatest improvement in what you’re doing, and you don’t currently have a lighting director, hire a lighting director.

[image quality] is affected more by operator actions than by camera characteristics, and sharpness is affected by contrast as well as resolution. A really good operator with a really bad camera is going to do a much better job than a really bad operator with the world’s best camera.

Lighting is not just adding light; sometimes it’s subtracting light

Aperture significantly impacts the sharpness of the picture. We get less sharp as we go to smaller apertures; that’s caused by diffraction. And we get less sharp as we go to wider apertures; that’s caused by the lens aberrations.

How do you get to the sharpest sweet spot? You can add or subtract lighting, you can change the gain of the camera, you can go to negative gain on certain cameras if you have too much lighting, You can use the shutter, again if you have too much lighting, that also reduces motion blur but that’s not necessarily so good because it can introduce motion judder. And you can use neutral density filtering, but one of the things you have to watch out for is possible glass flaws...

There are different types of resolution:

There’s temporal resolution, which is frames per second

Spatial resolution; resolution across the picture

Dynamic resolution: things that are moving and Static resolution, which is what people typically measure

Chroma resolution, or resolution in color, and luma resolution, which is resolution in black and white

Non-dimensional resolution; limes and pixels

And then there’s linear resolution, you may be familiar from computer stuff; dots per inch, if you for photography you may be familiar with line pairs per millimeter

Sharpness and things that end in -ness - sharpness, brightness - those are things that people perceive. They are subjective functions They are not objective functions. Resolution is something you can measure.

Sharpness is tremendously dependent upon the amount of contrast that you are getting.

When you buy a camera that has a 2/3” imager […] absolutely nothing in the camera is 2/3” The reason that we call it that is that back in the old days when we had tubes, and the tubes were round, we measured the tubes by the outside diameter, so in a 2/3” tube, the tube was 2/3 of an inch around, that’s 17mm, but the target area on the tube was only 11mm […] which is less than 1/2 inch.

Going to a smaller lens format means you need a better lens.

To sum up: Acquisition affects everything that follows, so problems should be fixed there.
Operator actions effect picture more than most camera characteristics
Sharpness is affected by contrast as well as resolution
And contrast is affected by diffraction and lenses.

At the end he was asked about the PBS Technical Operating Specifications, which require submitted HD material be from three-chip camera, not from a single-sensor camera. Since he'd mentioned single-sensor cameras in his talk, he was asked if they should seek a waver, ignore the TOS, or does Mark Schubin have some special privileges? His reply:

I as Mark Schubin don’t have special privileges and everything that I’m involved in is three chip. I am not doing any single-chip stuff for PBS. As for the other stuff, I would refer you to the TOS session and maybe you can raise that, and I think it’s a good point to be raised... and on the QT, they probably can’t tell. So I’d say if you’ve shot single sensor, you don’t have to tell them

The PMW-F3 launch event will include a screening of some of the first footage acquired with the camera, and a panel discussion with the production teams involved. You'll also have a chance to demo the camera.

Zoom Q3HD Video Recorder
Looking to improve the quality of your video's audio (though maybe not the video itself?) Zoom has combined what looks like the mics from the H1 with a video camera to create the Q3HD (think of it as the love child of a Flip and an H1 perhaps?) Price is $299, and it's just started shipping.

It's an intriguing option perhaps for musicians who want a simple way to make a self video with better audio. I'm just not convinced that to improve the audio you always want the mics on the camera...Zoom Q3HD:Product PageB & H:Zoom Q3HD Handy Video Recorder [$299.00]

iPhone as Audio Recorder
Speaking of the Zoom H1Photo Cine News has a short article about using the iPhone as an audio recorder in place of buying a separate device like the H1. I'm partial to the idea, though the other day I was doing just that - using the iPhone as an audio recorder for an interview - when I got a phone call. Messed up the recording.Photo Cine News: iPhone Audio Recorder as Zoom Alternative

Overall I love the idea of the Monitor X, and for those using a lightweight Steadicam Merlin or other stabilizer it is a must have product as it's light enough to balance on these rigs. It's also great when shooting on a tripod at eye level. You can keep both eyes on the event, using the Motion-X to help keep accurate framing and focus. I also love that JAG35 included two 1/4-20" mounts, allowing you to use it with articulating arms when used with a Cage or Shoulder rig. I hope that JAG35 takes it one step further by adding an anti-glare coating.

Sunday, December 05, 2010

It's annoying when programs do things they aren't supposed to - like crash while saving, or a feature won't work when your project gets too complicated. But I've had pretty good luck with Final Cut...until last week when I was editing the ATC "making of" music video. Everything was going fine - I'd even done some test exports - until I made some changes and did another export and suddenly something very odd was happening; a still frame from a completely different clip was being rendered in place of a couple of clips at one point in the timeline.

It didn't happen while playing back in Final Cut; only when I exported the clip using the Using QuickTime Conversion option..

In the past I've found that odd things like this can sometimes be "fixed" by adding a "non-filter" to a clip i.e. forcing the editor to do some processing to the clip before it exports it. I tried moving the clips to another track, as well as putting another clip underneath the clip. All I seemed to do was cause the odd rendering effect to move to another part of the sequence!

I even tried copying and pasting to another Sequence, and exporting to Compressor (which takes about four times as long) and still the problem occurred.

Finally, I did a simple export of the entire movie as a QuickTime Movie, which saves it in the format of the Sequence, rather than recompressing to a format of your choosing. This finally worked; and then I just imported the clip into another Sequence and exported it again with the settings I wanted.

It was troubling that I couldn't figure out why it was mis-behaving; especially as the project was short and not very complex.

Saturday, December 04, 2010

I've been following Rick Macomber on Twitter (boston_camera) for a month or so; though we'd never met and I can't even remember how I came to follow him. But last week he tweeted that he would be shooting a music video of a local band, Air Traffic Controller, and was looking for people willing to volunteer to crew the shoot. On a whim I dropped him a note and said I was interested in covering it for the blog, and he said 'come on down!' or words to that effect.

Rick is a broadcast news photojournaliat with WBZ TV Boston, but for side projects he's been exploring HDSLR filmmaking. A musician himself, Rick first met Dave Munro of Air Traffic Controller through an open mic that Dave's brother Jeff runs in Malden. Rick has produced, directed and edited four videos for ATC. The other videos were shot using a Canon HV40, but this video, "Brightest Moon," was shot using a Canon T2i with 17-50mm f2.8 lens.

The video was shot at 60 fps with Dave lip syncing the song at double speed, then slow mo was added in post by conforming the video to 30 fps in Cinema Tools to create a fluid dream-like effect. The video was edited in Final Cut Pro with color grading with Magic Bullet Looks.

The video was actually a reshoot; in the previous attempt they had some audio playback issues and the audio wasn't loud enough for the singer to get the words right.

I met Rick and the crew of four down at a park on Soldiers Field Road late Sunday afternoon. The shot consisted of one long take of Dave walking along a path, with the other band members - Brent Selby Kiara Ana Perico Wendy Mittelstadt and Merrick Nelson - making appearances as Dave walked along. The first hour was spent figuring out where to place everyone and practicing. Rick operated the camera on a Glidecam with a vest, walking backwards while Jim Akimchuk guided him and also held a small key light. Crew Cameron Robbins and Chris Loughran operated two Husky LED work lights to light both Dave and the other band members, while Dan Buckley handled audio playback. Billy Lawler handled audio playback on the previous shoot.

In total they shot twelve complete takes over the course of a couple of hours, with the best one being chosen for the final video.

One last note; I was really intrigued by the Husky work lights they were using. They cost about $60 at Home Depot and feature 180 individual lights and operate on internal battery for three or four hours. For this purpose they pumped out plenty of light, and I'm wondering if they'd make a useful light kit for interviews; quite a bit of light without the power and heat issues you get from traditional lighting kits.